There is another copyright battle emerging over intellectual property, and this time you, John or Jane Q. Citizen, could be smack-dab in the middle of it, for one of the most innocuous acts you could imagine - selling your used iPad.

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Designed here, but made overseas - that's the issue

According to reports, the Supreme Court case centers around the "first-sale doctrine" in copyright law. The doctrine simply means that you are allowed to buy and sell the things you purchase - even if your things have a copyright holder, you can still sell them because the copyright holder's control extends only to the "first-sale," a concept that the high court has observed for over a century.

Think of it like this. You buy a book by an author; the author owns the copyright so you can't legally make copies of the book without that author's permission. But, under the first-sale doctrine, you bought a copy of the book and sell your copy to someone else - a friend, co-worker or a willing buyer online.

In 1998, the first-sale doctrine was challenged by some copyright holders, but the Supreme Court held that it applied to all products made and sold in the U.S. The current case, however, stems from products manufactured abroad; in particular, it involved textbooks.

It seems to me that the problem essentially lies within the concept of IP (Intellectual Property), which concept seems to have been picked up by Big Corporates and other rent-seekers, and legally re-engineered into a set of weapons (e.g., copyright, patents, licencing, artificial barriers to entry) to create/maintain monopoly or oligopoly positions and guarantee resulting revenue-streams in perpetuity, in the form of a toll tax that we must all pay.This sort of thing is happening where democratic and capitalist religio-political ideologies prevail, but it could (and has) happened in one form or another where socialist-communist and Fascist ideologies prevail.

This taxation effectively manifests as a seemingly hostile and extortionate act against consumers, and it has been legalised.For a worst case example, you probably need do no more than look towards (say) Monsanto and GM corn and the injustices they have forced upon hapless farmers in, for example, the US, and India.

There is an ironic joke somewhere in here in the form of the term "Consumer Protection" - which is apparently a myth to pacify and make us feel comfortable whilst being held ever more still in the legal straightjackets fabricated by our lawmakers, so that the large and small parasitic leeches can continue to fasten and feed ever more voraciously on us consumers, who are at the bottom of the food chain.

This is classic corporate psychopathy in action, once again refined and sanctioned by statute/law. We are already turned into serfs.The recipients of the IP taxes are usually in the form of fat, greedy, lazy, selfish, uncaring, unproductive corporate psychopaths. They stifle creativity by taking ownership of its product and then taxing us for it and prohibiting the creative production or use of anything similar, in perpetuity.We should not complain, as they are merely performing very well and in the exact manner that we (society and lawmakers) set them up to do. The individual - the serf - has apparently embraced and condoned his own serfdom.

It is only a matter of time before these psychopathic corporations, in one form or another - e.g., maybe as a "benevolent" World Government - exact further tolls on citizens. Think a tax on carbon, on air, on potable water, on a patent on the human genome - i.e., on life itself. It has arguably already started.

We seem to intuitively or instinctively know that this is ethically/morally reprehensible, but at the same time we seem to be powerless against the Masters that we have made for ourselves. Serfdom = slavery.

What can you do about it? Well, you don't have to accept it. You could try being disobedient or rebellious against the status quo, but that could bankrupt you with fines, or land you in prison, or both. This is the remorseless force exerted on the slave.However, there is still one place where - for the time being at least - we can allow ourselves to live in freedom, and that is in our minds.

Nina Paley (filmmaker, activist, occasional Techdirt contributor, and many other things) has given an interesting interview with O'Reilly's Mac Slocum, in which she talks about the concept of "intellectual disobedience" -- merging "intellectual property" with "civil disobedience." Nina argues that if you believe in creating and sharing culture these days, copyright infringement is almost necessary, and people shouldn't apologize for it, but should stand up for what they're doing:

Quote

"A lot of people infringe copyright and they're apologetic ... If you know as much about the law as, unfortunately, I do, I cannot claim ignorance and I cannot claim fair use ... I know that I'm infringing copyright and I don't apologize for it."

The phrase "intellectual disobedience" has a call-to-arms ring to it, but Paley characterized it as an introspective personal choice driven by a need to create. "It's important for me as an artist to make art, and the degree of self-censorship that is required by the law is too great," Paley said. "In order to have integrity as a human being and as an artist, I guess I'm going to be conscientiously violating the law because there's no way to comply with the law and remain a free human being."

Just to augment the points I made in the above post, here's an example of forceful protection of corporate taxation in action. In this case, it's the Ports Authority of New York (a public corporation, funded by taxation) using the Police (another public corporation, funded by taxation) to enforce and protect their revenue streams by punitively penalising the New York taxpayers who have taken advantage of apparently legitimate means to minimise the cost of their tax payment (the toll across the George Washington Bridge) to the Ports Authority.Have you got that?

...This taxation effectively manifests as a seemingly hostile and extortionate act against consumers, and it has been legalised...

So here we apparently have a prime example of superb and unashamed collaborative parasitism by two parasitic public service corporations.I would have hoped that this sort of silliness could only happen in "America The Free", but I'm none too sanguine about that. /sarc offPolice Ticketing Informal Rideshare Participants Based On No Law

The crazy Supreme Court case that could make it illegal for you to sell the things that you own is coming up. Make your voice heard before it's too late.....

Well, the court hearing is set for this Monday, October 29th -- and we need you to join us in a day of online activism.

If we lose this fight, practically anybody who wants to resell products they bought -- from Macbooks and iPhones to our clothing and textbooks -- will have to ask copyright holders for permission first. And they'll have the right to deny it!

The forces that lined up in support of SOPA -- Hollywood, the recording industry, and other huge corporations -- are urging the Court to rule against consumers.

So we're going to fight back -- just like during the SOPA fight -- by using our websites to sound the alarm. Please take part!

Remarkably few people have even heard about this case, and it's time for us to change that.

Win or lose at the Supreme Court, we expect to have a legislative fight about this issue on our hands by January, and we need to push people to contact their members of Congress before Big Business gets them to side against us.

So we've built a variety of ribbons and ball-and-chain icons that you can put on your site on Monday to help make sure the whole world knows about this horrendous case.

You can view them all here, and sign up to use your site for activism on Monday -- we really need your help.

Participation from a few hundred sites -- or even a few dozen -- is almost certain to get the media's attention as they cover the Supreme Court hearing.

Everybody is welcome to join in the day of action, but your friends who sell things online will probably be especially interested.

Whether they use Craigslist, Ebay, Etsy, or just a personal site or a blog, they'll want to know that their right to keep selling could be in grave jeopardy.

Working on this principle no-one can sell anything unless they own the IP rights to the object.

That means no shop can sell a book or anything else because the shop has to buy the product in order to sell it to their customer. On that basis the shop is the first purchaser and cannot pass the goods on!

I suppose Apple would be more than happy to be the sole supplier of iPads etc. but I am not sure Amazon etc. will be happy!

This kind of law would absolutely crush a large portion of the US Economy, as well as making it outright impossible for anyone to start a new business.

On the books exist laws of the antitrust variety designed precisely to stop that kind of situation- forcing companies to break up and encouraging much needed competition.

If they actually pass this thing, then every single major business in the US needs an antitrust suit filed against it immediately on the ground that it is no longer possible for American consumers to create and distribute alternatives to the goods manufactured by these companies, who have more often than not proven they cannot be trusted.

Although we definitely need to make our stand on this one, the economic impacts alone mean that if they actually do uphold this there will with certainty be rioting leading to war from the economic collapse it would cause.

This kind of law would absolutely crush a large portion of the US Economy, as well as making it outright impossible for anyone to start a new business.

Well, some things aren't patented, so you could still sell those. Farmers would be safe as they could still sell their produce, like corn and soy... Ooops. Nope. Nix that. Owned by Monsanto.

Well, at least you could still be a lumberjack. Surely that'd be OK... Oops... Nix that. Trees are owned by Syngenta.

Yep. Looks like we're completely hosed.

I actually have on my desk a genuine innovation, the prototype of a device I came up with a few years back that is currently undergoing a gradual R&D process whenever I can spare time and money to tinker with it more. My employer already signed off, all rights to this invention belong to me alone.

The current test type is focused on what was originally intended to be a proof of concept model, which it more than achieved successfully.

Since then I've been attempting to actually make it function properly, which would make the rights to this design worth a fortune.

But a law like this? In order to mass produce this device once the design is corrected, I would have to buy raw materials from which to make them. Those raw materials would be processed into components and assembled.

Except I would then have to sell those materials again as part of the finished product.

Hey wait you can't do that

Oh look at that. It is no longer possible to sell ANYTHING at all unless you gathered the raw materials with your own hands, because at some point along the line goods would have had to exchange hands more than once.

This law would actually be beyond unreal- it would mean a COMPLETE national economic shutdown because not only could you not sell things you bought from someone else, but you couldn't manufacture your own without having access to your own supplies of raw materials.

Even the brass that is trying to push this law wouldn't be immune to it's consequences. Apple would have to buy oil wells from which to refine plastic, and their own chipmaking facilities to make their own hardware. They wouldn't be allowed to sell their products if they contained materials that were bought from someone else, or used somebody else's designs in any way.

I actually have on my desk a genuine innovation, the prototype of a device I came up with a few years back that is currently undergoing a gradual R&D process whenever I can spare time and money to tinker with it more. My employer already signed off, all rights to this invention belong to me alone.

The current test type is focused on what was originally intended to be a proof of concept model, which it more than achieved successfully.

Since then I've been attempting to actually make it function properly, which would make the rights to this design worth a fortune.

But a law like this? In order to mass produce this device once the design is corrected, I would have to buy raw materials from which to make them. Those raw materials would be processed into components and assembled.

Except I would then have to sell those materials again as part of the finished product.

Hey wait you can't do that

Oh look at that. It is no longer possible to sell ANYTHING at all unless you gathered the raw materials with your own hands, because at some point along the line goods would have had to exchange hands more than once.

This law would actually be beyond unreal- it would mean a COMPLETE national economic shutdown because not only could you not sell things you bought from someone else, but you couldn't manufacture your own without having access to your own supplies of raw materials.

Even the brass that is trying to push this law wouldn't be immune to it's consequences. Apple would have to buy oil wells from which to refine plastic, and their own chipmaking facilities to make their own hardware. They wouldn't be allowed to sell their products if they contained materials that were bought from someone else, or used somebody else's designs in any way.

Amazing, I almost want to see this happen now.

Yeah, you know how that works. First they come up with some total bs law with all kinds of loopholes, then argue about how to fix it to make it work for the next 2 years before they finally agree on how to amend it all, and of course will wind up totally screwing that up as well.

Yeah, it's that moebius strip of incompetence and malice, I can't quite believe they'll allow a law *and enforce it* that trashes absolutely every industry in the entire country! So they'll fiddle with it so that they can spot-use it which is the worst kind of malice, because it's like it never existed except when it's against specific targets.

This kind of law would absolutely crush a large portion of the US Economy, as well as making it outright impossible for anyone to start a new business.

Well, some things aren't patented, so you could still sell those. Farmers would be safe as they could still sell their produce, like corn and soy... Ooops. Nope. Nix that. Owned by Monsanto.

Well, at least you could still be a lumberjack. Surely that'd be OK... Oops... Nix that. Trees are owned by Syngenta.

Yep. Looks like we're completely hosed.

I actually have on my desk a genuine innovation, the prototype of a device I came up with a few years back that is currently undergoing a gradual R&D process whenever I can spare time and money to tinker with it more. My employer already signed off, all rights to this invention belong to me alone.

The current test type is focused on what was originally intended to be a proof of concept model, which it more than achieved successfully.

Since then I've been attempting to actually make it function properly, which would make the rights to this design worth a fortune.

But a law like this? In order to mass produce this device once the design is corrected, I would have to buy raw materials from which to make them. Those raw materials would be processed into components and assembled.

Except I would then have to sell those materials again as part of the finished product.

Hey wait you can't do that

Oh look at that. It is no longer possible to sell ANYTHING at all unless you gathered the raw materials with your own hands, because at some point along the line goods would have had to exchange hands more than once.

This law would actually be beyond unreal- it would mean a COMPLETE national economic shutdown because not only could you not sell things you bought from someone else, but you couldn't manufacture your own without having access to your own supplies of raw materials.

Even the brass that is trying to push this law wouldn't be immune to it's consequences. Apple would have to buy oil wells from which to refine plastic, and their own chipmaking facilities to make their own hardware. They wouldn't be allowed to sell their products if they contained materials that were bought from someone else, or used somebody else's designs in any way.

Amazing, I almost want to see this happen now.

Hahahah~!

I love that line of logic! Thing is, it's pretty much solid. There's little to be debated or argued.

The idea that ideas can be owned is just silly. If you tell someone an idea, you just gave it to them. And it's not possible for them to "give it back to you".

Here's an idea:

A flying ninja panda bear with laser eyes and a bad case of flatulence.

Reading it duplicates the idea along. And I've lost nothing. I still have that idea. It's a pretty nifty property of ideas - you can give them away, and you still have them!

Restricting ideas is bizarre. I'm not sure if I want to say it's immoral (like Richard Stallman), though I'm still debating that with myself. Not sure.

This whole sale of copyrighted stuff can only end in idiocy as we're starting from a flawed premise, so logical contradictions are bound to crop up.

A backyard inventor develops a prototype of an engine that can rival the power to weight ratio of jet propulsion, but retains the predictable behavior and performance characteristics of a piston engine. This development is done on a rather tight budget, and the resulting device takes a long time to reach the market due to the inventor's limited funding. With some persistence, it eventually happens and makes a fortune in doing so- or proves to be a market failure and is shelved with all of the other useless inventions.

Fiat Group, one of the big brass that owns several major automotive brands, takes a liking to this invention and figures out how to make one just like it. They then use their phenomenal investment capabilities to develop the concept and deliver a viable product to market in a manner of years, before the backyard inventor would have even gotten started with the first production type.

The result? It is impossible for the little guy to actually get anywhere, because the big names will always steal his idea and beat him to market. Copyrights and Patents were designed to prevent that, giving the little guy some authority over his creation.

Over time they've strayed from that purpose, and now are a tool used by big ticket interests to bully the law abiding population and ensure that nobody can ever compete with them.

Which is where the notion that copyrights and patents should not be available at all to Fortune 500 companies would result in a phenomenal improvement in the current economical and legal landscape. It would then be possible again for the little guy to compete, while big interests usually can leverage their financial resources to stay ahead of the R&D curve well enough to compete with other large scale companies and make sure the little guys stay on their toes.

There would also be a dramatic increase in the conductivity of the marketplace to new ideas, as ideas that have long been crushed under overly broad IP and squatting would become available again so that innovation could improve.

I cant really see you accepting the idea of discrimination - I mean if it's allowed one way, it'll be allowed the other. Mind you, saying that, there might be a workaround...

The reason for it is that Fortune 500 companies are the top 500 companies in the world in terms of profitability- Company #500 on the 2012 list was showing 4.something billion dollars in profit, while the #1 had over 110 billion dollars.

Copyrights and patents were designed to protect individuals and small businesses from their larger competitors. Do the top 500 companies in the world really need that protection too, when they are almost unrivaled in capability as it is?

I think it would be better implemented as that fortune 500s could still own patents and copyrights, thus they would also be able to create new ones or buy them from people. But they would not be able to enforce them while on that year's Fortune 500 list- thus if becoming a Fortune 500 caused them to lose enough profits that the following year they aren't anymore, their IP would be enforceable again.

But it would do a great deal to eliminate such things as companies buying patents just to hide them from the public, as smaller innovators would then be free to expand on those concepts and if it annoyed the big companies enough they could simply attempt to out-compete their smaller rivals, or buy them out.

The end result would be a major boost to innovation, as smaller companies would be free to invent and develop while larger companies would have a greater incentive to continue improving their technology so as to maintain their edge over the imitations.

Companies like Microsoft who are notorious for poor quality product would very quickly lose out without a major R&D turnaround, because fortune 500 and backyard programmer alike would be able to develop drastically improved alternatives that are plug in compatible.

And it would really put a lid on the scale of this whole IP legal mess we have, because the worst offenders would suddenly no longer have the authority to pursue such things.

The obvious workaround is to simply divide up the big companies into smaller ones, because then they wouldn't be as likely to be Fortune 500. But as a side effect, their amount of pooled wealth and political sway would be greatly reduced on top of the encouraged competition.

I've yet to actually come up with any ill effects of this, if you can think of one please name it.

The reason the courts stated that corporations are people are because even a fortune 500 company isn't a single entity, it's made up of tens to hundreds of people that are investors and expect the company that they invested in to make as much money as possible. Trying to bring down the fortune 500's would involve thousands of individual investors, which is a fight that the gov't don't want. Not to mention that these fortune 500's pay in (read that as pay off) to the gov't. It would be like shooting your boss, no boss, no paycheck..... The only way we are ever going to get out of this mess is with lobbying reform, and our paid and bought politicians aren't going to cut their own throats.....

All these things are well meant, and a part of the discussion, but all those big corps got there because they are deal makers, they won't just sit there and allow some competitive asset to be stripped "for the little man". Given the way those guys play, anyone who can be pegged as responsible for that happening would be business-politically blackballed for life and used as a Business Case in shame for the next 30 years.

My pet spin on the theory is that it needs some other big pocket to find a strategy reason to push for that alongside the Little Man. So then when the Little Man gets some of the same money on his side of the table, the other players at least have to deal them a hand into the table game.

In fact right after its implementation it would actually have an opposite effect- companies would be pushing as hard as possible to get ahead while they still hold the upper hand because their competition hasn't developed copycats yet.

Over time though the competition would gradually wear down the big companies, and give younger ideas a fighting chance.

I could also see it being a rather large economic stimulus too. Because this now provides a very powerful incentive for companies to avoid being sufficiently large scale as to trigger such a penalty, you end up with lots of small and medium businesses instead. More people would be working because every company has to have people answering the phones or sweeping the floors, and larger scale companies have less of these people relative to their overall workforce. There would be more people involved in R&D as well among the companies that do remain Fortune 500 or near that level, as they would be pushing to stay on top of the curve and ahead of their competition even more than they already do.

In the long run that means more jobs, because more people will be employed to accomplish the same amount of work- each company will need it's own people for the tasks that benefit the most from the economy of scale.

Unfortunately, you probably are right. Losing the right to enforce their IP means that they would eventually lose profits- though they might gain them back by copying competitors. It would still be a battle to get this kind of thing through the current government.

There's a problem with the wearing down of the big Co's, namely cost to enter the market. "Anyone" can make a patent, with a cheap prototype, but say the real thing costs $300,000, that's a bit much for a small inventory to find under the couch, whereas that's Joe's Petty Cash at Big Corp to spend at 3:37 PM on a Friday.

Plus don't forget the Trolls. We keep talking about the mythical "honest small inventor" but if the language gets a loophole "accidentally" inserted, then it just makes the trolls worse.

The obvious workaround is to simply divide up the big companies into smaller ones, because then they wouldn't be as likely to be Fortune 500. But as a side effect, their amount of pooled wealth and political sway would be greatly reduced on top of the encouraged competition.

And also put the US at an disadvantage to the way it's done in most other major industrial economies on this planet.